Philly’s school facilities planning process greenlit, support for a Northeast High teacher: school board roundup

Philadelphia’s school board voted to formally kick off its long-promised facilities planning process Thursday night, launching an undertaking that could reshape the city school district’s massive footprint over the next several years.

The Philadelphia School District wants to modernize its facilities to accelerate achievement and optimize student experiences, but it’s a chronically underfunded system with $8 billion in facilities needs and an average building age of 73 years.

Some of its 216 schools are overcrowded, but some have more than 1,000 empty seats. It recently opened two new buildings, but has also needed to temporarily close multiple buildings over the past two years because of environmental hazards such as damaged asbestos.

» READ MORE: Philly is starting on a process that will likely lead to school closures, new buildings. Here’s what you should know.

“School systems, educational and community needs shift over time,” school board president Reginald Streater said at the meeting. “We recognize the need to modernize our infrastructure to meet the evolving needs of our students and staff.”

School closings, more new buildings, co-locations and reimagining building uses are all up for discussion, officials have said, though they vowed not to foist decisions on communities but to create plans with them.

The board on Thursday night authorized $5 million in contracts to support the process: a two-year, $4.5 million agreement with DLR Group, a global design firm, for facilities planning services, and a $430,000, one-year contract with Insight Education Group and Brownstone PR for community engagement support.

Board member ChauWing Lam said she believed the work was necessary and the time to move forward was right, but said she was concerned about the cost of the contracts.

Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. said that while local knowledge and needs will be of greatest importance, technical expertise is needed to support district staff.

“This is a tremendous undertaking for the administration... we want it to be right, we don’t want to kick the can down the road,” Watlington said.

Next up, the district will assemble a project team, including district and external members, and begin community engagement. A plan, presumably with recommendations around possible closings, new buildings and other changes, is expected to be submitted to the board by next fall.

In other board matters:

Tensions around how Philadelphia teachers and students discuss and process issues around the war in Gaza have simmered publicly since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.

Watlington on Thursday night said the district will not tolerate antisemitism or Islamophobia “or discrimination against any diverse groups. Our job as educators is to help children think critically, not to tell them what to think. Additionally, it is our responsibility as K-12 educators to facilitate effective learning environments where diverse points of view can be shared and discussed in a very thoughtful and meaningful way.”

He said the district is working with universities and a nonprofit to host student forums and workshops for district and school leaders, as well as providing coaching and training at 10 schools most impacted by the war in Gaza.

But some speakers said that while district officials make statements about how they wants to foster robust and respectful discussion, they are, in practice, stifling it.

Several community members, teachers, and a student spoke up for Keziah Ridgeway, the popular Northeast High teacher who has faced “harassment, threats and removal” from her job because of her personal social media posts and activism.

Ridgeway, a Lindback Award-winning history teacher, was the subject of a complaint by the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, which accused Ridgeway of using her job to inject anti-Israel sentiment into the curriculum and threatening some Jewish parents via her personal social media accounts, including one with a gun emoji.

Ridgeway has rejected the claim as baseless. Multiple members of the public said on Thursday night that Ridgeway was removed from her classroom at Northeast after the complaint was filed.

District officials do not comment on personnel matters, but an email sent to Northeast High families by the school principal and shared with The Inquirer stated that a complaint about an unnamed Northeast staff member was being investigated, and during that time, “the staff member who allegedly engaged in this conduct will be reassigned offsite.”

Jethro Heiko, a Northeast parent who is Jewish, testified as an ardent Ridgeway supporter.

His daughter’s former teacher is “being targeted by outside agitators... weaponizing false claims of antisemitism to undermine the teaching of history and social studies in our schools,” Heiko said.

Heiko’s daughter Hazel, a junior, told the board Ridgeway should not have been removed.

“She is a teacher who will always stand up for her students no matter what, and will advocate for everyone who walks into her classroom,” Hazel Heiko said of Ridgeway. The district wants students to be empowered to discuss difficult issues “but you just removed the best teacher qualified to do that.”

State Rep. Chris Rabb (D., Phila.) did not mention Ridgeway by name, but said he stood with “the educators and students who have shown great discernment about understanding the difference in discomfort and not confusing it for danger, animus or even harm... And while there’s significant difference between engaging in conversations or behaviors meant to cause harm, addressing critical issues with intentionality and thoughtfulness is essential.”

More than a dozen district principals testified about their schools’ strengths and the need for the district to champion them — and traditional public education — as it begins its facilities planning work in earnest.

“Rightsizing is a corporate term,” said Will Brown, principal of Parkway West, a small magnet high school that shares a building with Middle Years Alternative, a small middle school. “We are here for the needs of students and families, and many benefit from small school models.”

Robin Cooper, president of the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators Local 502, the district’s principals union, said she watched as the district was “picked apart, sold to the highest bidders... while holding up various alternatives as better than we could ever hope to be.”

Despite daunting odds, staff and students have made progress, and want to make more. But, Cooper said, they need officials to step up.

“We need you to be the biggest cheerleaders for this very difficult body of work,” Cooper said. “We need to hear from our district, our school board, our elected city officials to say what support can be provided to build our student enrollment.”